


The End of the World

by ava_jamison



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Bronze Age of Comics, Multi, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 03:48:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17594015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ava_jamison/pseuds/ava_jamison
Summary: It's 1971, and Dick is leaving for college. Bruce is grieving.





	The End of the World

Colored party lights strung through the trees twinkle in the late summer twilight, as Bruce maneuvers the brand new, jet black, 1971 custom Jaguar convertible through the wrought iron gates of the third largest estate in Gotham. Bright paper lanterns, hung to celebrate the last social event of the season, swing in the breeze that carries soft strains of dance music out across the lawn. The sun-warmed afternoon cooled when dusk fell. Summer is almost over. Autumn is coming, and with it, Dick will be gone.

Bruce looks over at his passenger, who stops fiddling with the radio dial long enough to grin at him. Bruce smiles thinly back, and that makes Dick grin harder. 

“It’ll be fine, Bruce.” Dick absently pats Bruce’s arm, then spins the dial once more and stops on some tune—a girl singing about a boy and love. Dick seems to know the song, his tasseled loafer tapping on the floorboard, still grinning broadly. 

“Easy for you to say.” Bruce doesn’t want to go to this party. He’d suggested they forgo it, several times. Just two days ago to Alfred, who’d arched his eyebrow and momentarily stopped cleaning the family silver. 

“Really, sir. You have yet to show at any of the senior events, save the graduation ceremony.”

“I thought graduation ended it, Alfred. And with Crazy Quilt on the loose again—”

“You will both take your communicators, placing them on vibrate only. You will be ten minutes from the manor. If you are needed, you will respond,” Alfred said, sighing. “Just as you always do.” He narrowed his eyes slightly, continuing. “I hardly need remind you that young Master Dick missed out on the holidays that most of the young people enjoyed already this summer, due to his own… obligations.” 

“You can’t be arguing that a life of indolence is preferable to one of service, Alfred.” 

“No, I am not.” Alfred‘s tone sharpened slightly, and he put down the tea tray he’d been wiping. “I am simply saying that these things… such as these end of summer parties—are a rite of passage. Master Dick has attended four of them this month, given by four different families. Prominent families who have chosen to mark the fact that their children are going away to begin their adult lives.”

“I don’t think I can give a party for teenagers, Alfred—” 

“I’m not saying you should.” Alfred’s voice softened. “I am saying that most of the other young people’s parents do at least attend.”

“Useless men and women who don’t have anything better to do than spend an evening making small talk and drinking lime rickeys.”

“Be that as it may, I think Master Dick would appreciate your presence at a single party,” Alfred said, closing the jar of silver polish. “This is the last one.” 

“I don’t fit in with the—other parents. I’m not even…”

“Indeed you do not. I don’t think anyone expects you to, Master Bruce.”

“What’s that supposed to m—”

“I’m simply saying that Master Dick might appreciate your presence as a gesture of support. Of normalcy, if you will.”

“The other parents are vacuous dolts, stumbling their way through cocktail parties and golf games.”

Alfred stacked the silver sugar bowl and creamer neatly on the tray. “They will, as always, be very taken with Bruce Wayne.” 

“They will be very taken with Bruce Wayne, millionaire.”

“Regardless of their motivation, they will focus on superficialities. It will hardly be different from any other Wayne Foundation appearance. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have further chores to attend to,” Alfred had said, firmly ending the conversation. 

The day before the party, Bruce had suggested to Dick that perhaps their time would be better spent completing the most recent update of the city’s blueprints. It was, he’d reminded Dick, the last time Robin would be available until Thanksgiving, as this was his last weekend at home for nearly three months. 

And Dick had said, “Sure, Bruce. Work comes first.” But he’d looked disappointed enough that Bruce knew he’d better square his shoulders and step into the maws of plastic, trite simpletons instead of… any number of ways he’d prefer spending this last weekend. There was plenty of work to be done, plenty of files and data and any number of tasks he could use Robin‘s help on, but Alfred was right. Dick needed him to attend. It’s the least he can do. 

So he’d picked up the new jag for the occasion, and Dick’s eyes had been huge. 

Bruce glides the car to a stop in front of the house, where a valet stand has been erected for the evening. The valets whistle appreciatively to each other as the sleek convertible slides to a stop.

Bruce forces his face to smooth into Bruce Wayne, socialite guardian. If Dick is getting four or five of these invitations a month, Bruce can force himself to be here tonight, he tells himself. Dick, of course, can go and has gone to as many as he’d like. Bruce trusts him. He’s trusted Dick when he’d gone on the two or three dates he’d found time for, and he’s trusted him at these parties, whether Alfred brought him or Dick caught a ride with a few of his friends, always making it home by curfew, even though he sometimes calls, protests having a curfew at all. The scent of his aftershave mixed with some girl’s perfume. But in time for patrol.

The host and hostess, Peggy and Tom McAfee, are waiting at the door to greet their guests. Inside, the lights are bright and the teeny bopper music is loud. “Glad Dick finally got here,” Peggy McAfee says, a deeply tanned woman with shellacked blonde hair. She sticks her hand in his and squeezes. “Everyone was watching for him. Our Penny’s crazy about him.”

“That girl,” Tom McAfee says, shaking Bruce’s hand and his own head. “She’s too crazy about boys.” 

Bruce trusts Dick as he watches him cross the room to join the young people. He watches a girl—he recognizes her from another time—was it Dick’s sophomore year? Time goes so quickly—when she hung all over Dick. Penny, he supposes. Maybe she’s the one he took to that dance last spring. She’s very pretty and she can’t take her eyes off Dick. Giggling at whatever Dick’s telling her and taking his arm. She pulls him closer, bringing him into the group of young people.

“Bruce Wayne,” a big, booming voice calls out. Bruce turns to see the familiar face of one of the most odious of the parents. The man is Bill Turgible, a financier, and Bruce has had to listen to his investment spiel at every one of Dick’s major high school functions, freshman to senior year. That must make five times by now. 

“How in the hell are you, Bruce?” the man says, clapping him on the shoulder. “Am I ever glad to see you, Buddy. Come on, let’s leave these ‘kids’ to themselves. They’ve got the rec room. No reason why the adults can’t have the rest of the place!” He winks, adding under his breath, “The real party’s on the patio, my boy.” To his son he calls, “Mark! See you later, kiddo!”

He leads Bruce outside, into the backyard. The ambiance is sultrier, more suave, more adult. Instead of raucous, the music is smooth. Bruce vaguely registers it as something mellow, maybe Tijuana Brass. ‘Taste of Honey’. The obviously new, bright aqua pool is lit from below with underwater lights and above by paper lanterns. A few people are dancing in a cleared space on one side of the pool, between the freshly painted cabana and an extensive, rolling lawn. Crowds of adults cluster here and there, mostly grouped around a buffet and an open bar. For a party for teens, there are three times as many adults. Makes sense, of course, two parents per child is the norm, maybe some family friends have been invited. Everybody loves these kids. 

“Glad Dick finally got here,” a woman says, turning to smile at Bruce, her eyes already a little liquor-glazed. “My daughter Janey was watching for him. She’s mad about your kid. “That girl,” a nearby man, perhaps Janey’s father, says. “She’s too crazy about boys.” 

“Too bad he’s been so busy this summer,” the woman continues, her words only slurring slightly. “I don’t think they’ve even had time to see each other, apart from these little soirees. It’s hard to see our darlings grow up and leave us, isn’t it?” 

From out here on the patio, Bruce can see inside the McAfee’s house. A large, brightly lit window faces the pool, and inside, the young people are dancing. “Which one is yours?” A man beside him asks, digging into a tower of boiled shrimp on toothpicks.

“Dick Grayson,“ a woman at his elbow answers. It’s the hostess, Penny’s mother.“This is his guardian, Bruce Wayne. Cocktail, Mr. Wayne?”

Bruce accepts the drink she hands him. It’s a little dim out here by the pool, but he makes out that it’s something clear, with a twist of lime. The glass is sweating, cold in his hand. 

She toasts him, and he raises his glass. 

“To empty nests,” she says. 

Bruce takes a sip of his drink. It’s bitter.

The man at the seafood tower, a tall construction of ice, toothpicks and naked pink shrimp—a bull-necked fellow with a crew cut, introduces himself. “Clint Rayburn. Nice to finally meet you, Wayne. I’d shake your hand, but—” he motions toward the plate he’s holding in one hand and his drink, in the other. “Aw, hell,” he sighs, putting down his drink, wiping his hand on his trousers and extending his hand.

Bruce shakes it. It is clammy.

“I wish our daughter could find someone like Dick,” says the man, dredging a shrimp through cocktail sauce. “Instead of College Boy over there.” He stabs a toothpick toward the warm, bright room. 

“Why can’t our Monica be more like Penelope?” the small, compact redhead on Bruce’s left muses. 

“My wife, Connie,” bull-neck says.

“Date someone nice like Dick, instead of a frat boy three years older than her?” Connie continues.

“BMOC,” says bull-neck. “Big Man on Campus. Our Monica’s in love.”

Bruce picks Monica out of the crowd in the rec room. She must be the one in the sleeveless eyelet dress. She’s hanging all over an older boy in a varsity sweater with leather patches on the elbows. The boy’s regular featured, good-looking face wears an expression of aloof superiority. The kind that’s never anything but a cover for youthful insecurity. He almost expects the kid to pull out a pipe. Like the other boys, this one is wearing his hair a trifle longer than young men used to; letting his sideburns get a little more pronounced. 

Dick is wearing his hair a little longer lately, too, and Bruce sees that the blonde is touching the hair that’s growing and curling ever so slightly at Dick’s collar. 

She’s in a miniskirt, but at least she’s not one of the girls in go-go boots as well. She’s a cute, preppy blonde that was in all likelihood a cheerleader until graduation. 

The other kids are mostly cookie cutter. He’d say it had to do with being a teen except, he looks around himself—all of their parents are cookie cutter too. 

Bruce takes another sip of his drink. It’s a lime rickey. 

Bull-neck introduces him to a woman. She’s a dark-haired divorcee in a short, short cocktail dress wearing heavy black eyeliner. She reminds him of Jackie O and… someone else. When he lights her cigarette, her eyes flick up to his and he sees—something in them reminds him of Selena. Maybe it’s the eyeliner, maybe it‘s the look in her eyes.

Someone’s put a new song on the stereo. “This Magic Moment.” Dick likes this song. Bruce heard it coming from Dick’s bedroom almost every day for a solid fortnight after prom. One day, on the way to school and work, Alfred had briefly switched the Bentley’s radio from the news station, and a snatch of this chorus had sounded through the limo. “It’s that song you like, Master Dick,” he’d said, and Dick had blushed. 

“Dreadfully dull, isn’t it?” the divorcee says. “I just came tonight for my daughter. My ex-husband’s here too. Wants to make business contacts. He’s schmoozing plastics.” She taps the ashes of her Virginia Slim into a potted palm, probably rented just for the party. “You look as bored as I am. Come and dance with me?”

They dance the Twist to the music Dick likes. Or perhaps, liked, once. It’s mechanical, and the song seems to go on too long. 

Inside, the kids are doing something else. It looks like they’ve gotten hold of a makeshift Limbo stick. Bruce moves closer to see.

Jackie O wanders away, then is back. She puts a martini in his hand. He wonders where he left his other drink. “He’s adorable,” the woman says, following Bruce’s eyes toward the mansion window. 

“How do you know,” he asks, “which one is… mine?”

She rolls her eyes at him. “We all know who you are, Mr. Wayne.” She winks at him and Bruce is more reminded of Selina than before. She clicks her drink to his, then raises her glass toward the McAfee's house and its teenagers. “Hope their hormones don’t get in the way.” 

She lets him light another cigarette for her. “Mine’s the one holding up the wall.”

He looks to see who she means.

“In the corner.” She points. “Oh, look. Dick’s talking to her.”

The shy, washed-out creature looks uncomfortable in her own skin, and in her unfortunate choice of dress. Its style and color do not flatter. Her mother should have helped her, Bruce thinks. The girl’s arms are folded, protective across her chest. 

He watches Dick go to the girl, take her hand, bring her into Limbo, into the party, into the fun. She’s hesitant at first, smiling nervously, obviously resisting, until Dick pulls her, laughing, from the chair she’s most likely been glued to since she arrived. Bruce sighs. Dick. Bringing her into the warmth of his smile.

Bruce excuses himself, ostensibly to freshen his drink. He wanders the grounds, restless, ignoring some assignation that seems to be occurring behind the cabana between two adults who are probably not married. At least, not to each other.

Near the roses in the side yard, he ends up running into the hostess, who leads him on a home tour that covers most of the first floor, then takes them upstairs past the ‘kids’. He sneaks a look. Popcorn and cokes and Monica has spilled some on her white eyelet mini dress and Dick has taken off his sweater vest—always the gentleman, he’s dabbing it at the bodice of her dress, using it to try to clean up the worst of the spill, Bruce notes with minor dismay. Bruce and the hostess—Peggy, he reminds himself—end up somewhere on the third-floor landing. The hostess offers to show him more, but he’s seen a bedroom before. She’s tipsy. With just a touch of the hiccups.

The teens are still dancing when he escapes and makes it back downstairs. Dick is laughing with the frat boy, who punches him playfully in the arm when Dick cuts in on his dance partner. They’re doing a different dance now. Bruce doesn’t know what it is. Laughing and gregarious, Dick is pure charisma. Shining, pure charisma. Strength and fearlessness and grace. He’s dancing with the blonde girl again. Suzanne? Bruce remembers her from some other time. She’s very pretty and painfully young. Fresh and clean, a Breck girl right out of a magazine. 

It hurts. His heart is breaking. Dick is going away soon and his heart is breaking. 

He wants to tell him, show him, beg him. He can never do these things. 

He’s jealous, he suddenly realizes, biting back the tiny bark of a shocked, suppressed laugh, honestly surprised that he didn’t know before. Of the little blonde Breck girl, who can stare at Dick openly, adoringly, casual. Laugh too loud at his jokes and dance with him and touch his hair. 

He rejoins the darkness at the edge of the cabana and watches them. They are dancing too closely. One of her hands is resting on the bare skin at the back of Dick’s neck, under the collar of his shirt. He watches as she runs a finger through the hair there, once, then makes a little face as both she and Dick laugh. It’s certainly damp by now—after all that dancing—damp just around the edges, curling a little at the base of his neck and over the edge of his collar. Bruce can’t tell if he likes it longer or wishes Dick would cut it short again. 

Bruce forces himself to roam the pool area, slowly moving amongst the jaded Gothamites who want to ingratiate themselves to him and his father’s money. He looks up at the sky and wishes for the Bat Signal. If it was there, Dick would have to leave with him.

He and Jackie dance again, then she whispers something in his ear and slips away. Bruce considers. He has made love twice in the last six months, both times with Selina. 

He decides. While the young have their wholesome, laughing fun, he will seek solace with a stranger. He joins her in a cabana dressing room. It’s quick, and perfunctory. Neither one of them undresses, and he takes her from behind, against a cold sink. She doesn’t remind him of Selina at all, anymore. She doesn’t want to be kissed—“Don’t muss my hair or makeup, darling.” She keeps her eyes closed and touches herself, moving his hand away when he tries. The only place he touches bare flesh is at her shoulder blade, his hand under the back of her sleeveless black dress, stroking.

It could be anyone’s back, really. Anyone’s shoulder blade his palm is gliding over, someone else his hips are pressing against. Someone who has wide-open eyes and is twisting around to kiss him.

She touches herself and comes with a little gasp. He knows she wants him to hurry up. He doesn’t want her to say anything. 

So he closes his own eyes and it helps. The shame helps, too, building inside him, as he sees; catches Dick in an alcove and herds him into… anywhere. Some small room where he can lock the door. Dick looks surprised, confused. His blue eyes are wide, searching. “Bruce, what are you…” and when Dick figures it out, his eyes change to desire. Want and welcome and desire. 

In his nobler fantasy, he would kiss Dick breathless. Tell him how much he means, how much he needs him, make his case for Dick’s love. Earn it. He already has Dick’s devotion, respect. But if he could earn the other kind of—if he could, in some perfect, make-believe world, earn the other kind of feeling, he would show Dick. Show him everything. With warm, gentle kisses and waves of pleasure. Make him gasp and laugh and tremble all at once. Soft skin and hard muscles. Press against him, feel him, tender and needy. Spill himself. Come between those smooth thighs and slowly lick them clean. And in the morning, Dick would wake in his bed, warm and happy and content. Dick will have been made perfect, perfect love to, and it will be his first time and he will have loved it beyond measure and now he’s never going to leave. 

“Don’t come inside me,” Jackie says, interrupting. He leans closer, presses his cheek to the dip of her shoulder, feeling the rasping fabric of her dress, smelling her perfume, closing his eyes against the sound of her voice.

In his most shameful fantasies, he’d claim Dick. Mark him and claim him so forcefully, so well, so deeply, that Dick would know. Marked forever. Kept. Forever. Bound to him: sweet, beloved. And owned. He’d drag Dick out of the rec room, away from the parents and the teenagers and ugly, raucous music. Shove him into… somewhere, some room… Confront him about the girls he’d been flirting with. Correct him. Ignore Dick’s pleas, because Dick would plead innocence, like he didn’t even know how crazy it made him …

Silence his confusion. Kiss Dick, touch him. Bite and lick and taste and take until Dick’s whispers of confusion change to sighs of pleasure.

Jackie gasps. Maybe she comes again, perhaps. Bruce can’t tell for sure. He doesn’t open his eyes yet. In his fantasy, now he’s walked back downstairs, looking all the world like nothing ever happened. Calm, confident, he waits at the bottom of the stairs. A few moments later, a door opens and Dick makes his way toward Bruce, smiling as he joins him. A little flushed, satisfied. Dressed and pristine again. He no longer wishes to talk to his young, glowing classmates. Bruce puts his hand on Dick’s back. “It’s time to go home,” he says. “Let’s tell our host how much you enjoyed the party.” On prompt, like Dick’s twelve again. “Tell your host how much you enjoyed the party, Dick.” And Dick looks at Bruce with a smile that tells him everything he’s ever wanted. Ever wanted to know. Ever wanted to have.

Bruce climaxes. He is filled with self-loathing. 

Jackie lets him kiss her cheek. One of her false eyelashes has come loose at the corner. He leaves her to fix it. Out by the pool, a man who may be her ex-husband finds him and tries to sell him some shares in a plastics company.

Some of the parents have left the party by now. The adult group is decidedly smaller. Bruce makes another round of the slightly lonelier circuit, nodding and responding to inquiries, but his mind is elsewhere. He decides to keep Dick with him. He will keep him from going to New Carthage. He will pull the Robin card.

He will appeal to Dick’s sense of duty and loyalty. He will tell Dick that he must live at home next year, because Robin is needed. In Gotham, where he belongs. Gotham would, it is assuredly true, be safer if Robin stayed at home. He can live at home and commute to the community college twenty minutes away. Bruce will buy him the best car in the world, and he will tell Dick that he, Batman himself, will be safer with a partner—a Robin—than he would be alone. It will only be the truth, after all.

He sits in the cooling, dark night on a wicker chaise lounge and stares at the yellow rectangle of light. It seems far away. The young people are still dancing. He can hear their music over the instrumental jazz playing out here by the pool.

Someone sits down beside him and blows a stream of smoke past his line of sight. It’s Jackie. Her voice is husky. “It’s wasted on them, you know.” She sounds as if she may have been crying a little before she left the cabana. 

”Hmm?” Bruce says, realizing she’s speaking before the words quite make sense.

“It’s wasted on them.” She takes another, long drag on her cigarette. “Youth. Innocence. They squander it before they even know what they have.”

“Perhaps.” 

“Just like we did.”

“Perhaps,” Bruce says again, helpless. 

He looks away from the McAfee’s window, toward the direction of New Carthage, thinking. And sees, silhouetted against the night sky, the Bat Signal. It calls to him and he knows, even as he stands to heed its beacon, that he can’t keep Dick at the Manor. Can’t keep him from normalcy. Dick will go out in the world. He will meet girls; he will be happy.

“Jackie,” Bruce says, ready to walk away.

“My name’s Adele,” she says.

“Ah. My apology. Please excuse me, Adele.” 

She nods.

He goes to collect Robin.

Dick is not in the rec room. Several of the teenagers have disappeared. 

“Penny wanted to show him,” one of the boys, Mark perhaps, begins. His words are slurred. He’s been in the liquor.

Mark’s friend punches him in the arm. 

“Yes,” Bruce waits, impatient. 

“I think she wanted to show him the gazebo,” Mark sniggers. “Or maybe her black light posters.”

Bruce heads to the gazebo, out on the front lawn. The valets have abandoned their post, but the jag’s keys are hanging on a hook and he snags them on the way. He will find Dick, they’ll drop the jag at the manor, then be in Gotham in twenty minutes.

He encounters a couple there, in the gazebo. Penny is part of said couple, but Dick is not the boy in question. The teenagers are embarrassed, fumbling.

“Ah, Suzanne then,” he thinks. 

There’s music and the tiny ray of light coming from one car in the parking area, far from the house. As he gets closer, Bruce realizes it’s that song—the one that Dick likes. The car is a battered Thunderbird, some kid’s dad’s hand-me-down, and it’s got three bumper stickers on the back: Goldwater, a fraternity, and one for Hudson U. The seats are tilted three-quarters of the way back. 

From his place in the shadows, Bruce can see two young people, bathed in the blue glow of the car’s low dash. It’s Dick. Dick and that horrible frat boy, Bruce knows, even before he gets close enough to really see. They are both fully clothed, thankfully, but frat boy has his right arm around Dick’s shoulders, his left hand down Dick’s trousers. Dick’s eyes flutter open and closed, then stay closed as the older boy kisses him—kisses, very intently, and with a lot of gusto, like a clumsily amorous puppy—Dick’s neck, throat, and the 'vee' of exposed skin at Dick’s chest. Dick’s head tilts back, and he’s smiling.

Bruce is surprised to find that this… this does not bother him in the way he would have imagined. He watches for a long moment. He’ll keep this picture in his head. Dick’s face at this very second. Dick and his joyful, youthful exuberance. 

Bruce knows he should probably talk to Dick about discretion, but right now… Dick’s face as he’s coming, all open and surprised, laughing and gasping. So young, so handsome, so beautiful. Framed in ecstasy. No one should look so beautiful. His face flushed, his—his hand, on the other boy’s back, trembling against a varsity sweater. Being practically kissed to death. It’s something Bruce will be able to keep, and for that he’s grateful. 

Alfred buzzes him on his intercom. Bruce steps deeper into the shadows, his voice low. “Yes?”

“The Bat Signal, sir.” Bruce can’t say why for sure, but he welcomes the familiarity of Alfred’s voice. Bland as ever. “The commissioner.”

“I’m on my way,” Bruce says. “Dick’s going to need a ride home. Can you pick him up from the party?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“I’ll let him know,” Bruce says, looking over at the Thunderbird. 

“Very well, sir. Shall I adhere to Master Dick’s usual weekend curfew time?”

Bruce checks his watch. “Yes, Alfred. I think that will be fine.”

“You’re going out alone then, Master Bruce?”

“Might as well get used to it, I suppose. Working on my own. It has been a long while, hasn’t it?”

“Indeed it has, sir. Alfred out.”

As Bruce climbs into the jag, he buzzes Robin, once. From across the lawn, he hears a car door open and close, and a few minutes later, Dick’s voice, breathy and a bit ragged, comes over the com. “Yes?”

“Dick, I’m going to have Alfred come and get you.”

“Um, okay Bruce.” 

“He’ll be there by curfew.”

For once, Dick doesn't even protest. He is looking at the sky, Bruce knows. “You—you see the signal, Bruce?”

“Yes. Are you only now seeing it?” he chides.

“Um, yeah.” Dick clears his throat. “I mean yes." And just that quickly, he’s Robin. "Don't you need me?"

“I’m taking this one alone. Be ready for Alfred when he gets there.” Bruce pauses, hesitates. “Also, one of the girls was looking for you. Suzanne, I think. Maybe Penny.” To make sure tonight’s… activities with the young man are now at an end, he adds, with a perverse kind of pleasure, “Perhaps it was Monica. She has your sweater. Wants to return it to you.”

“Um…” Bruce imagines Dick looking back at the house, at least a little nervous. “Okay, Bruce.” There is silence, except for panting breaths. 

Bruce just… listens. For a moment. “And Dick...”

“Yes, Bruce?”

“Make sure you thank your hosts for the party.”

“Acknowledged,” Dick says. “Robin out.”

“Batman out.” 

Bruce checks the time as he speeds through the estate’s iron gates. It’s not eleven yet, and he feels ready to dispatch whatever problem is calling him to Gotham in record time. With any luck, he too can be home by curfew.

**Author's Note:**

> *Breck Girl: Advertising campaign for a shampoo (Breck) featuring beautiful, wholesome young women. Here's the [one I had in mind](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/breck-girls-60936753/).


End file.
